The Daily Puppy

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

To wrap up our project, we created a petition online against pet stores that sell puppies. From our research of information on the web and participation by people in the elements we created, we found a common theme against stores. Pet stores get their puppies from puppy mills, which poorly mistreat the dogs and over-breed them to make a profit. The puppies in stores are often displayed in glass cages, and are not cared for as well as they are in animal shelters. The reason this petition specifically targets pet stores that sell dogs is because many animals in pet stores, such as small rodents and birds, are difficult to obtain from other places. If we were to petition against stores that sold those animals, we would potentially be petitioning against ownership of those animals altogether. If you followed us along the way, have read through the blog or just simply do not want to see pet stores sell puppies, sign our petition! It only takes a few seconds, thanks!

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Here is our element this week! We made several storifies of the twitter chat that we held last week under the hashtag #nifkin. We picked out a few topics that had the most responses and here are the storifies to them! Be sure to give them a like if you enjoyed!

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Be sure to participate in our twitter chat tonight! It's today, April 10th, at 9 PM EST on twitter under #nifkin and ends at 10 PM. We will be discussing pet stores against animal shelters, be sure to chip in and give us your thoughts! And don't forget the #nifkin so others can see what you say!

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Check out our Jeopardy game. Pick how many teams you want and then start answering questions! You don't have to type in your answer just verbally say it to whoever your playing with or yourself if your alone. When you click on correct response the answer will show up and you can reward yourself with points with the plus sign by the team names. Then click continue and keep answering questions! Comment on our blog or Facebook page telling us how many points you got, or you could even tweet us! We look forward to hearing how you guys do!

The average score of the survey was 70%. The lowest score was a 45% and the highest score was 85% by 2 people.

The only question that had a 100% perfect score was question 4, which was the picture of a dog being walked. Every person answered shelter for this picture, which was the correct answer. The fact that it was being walked was the reason for choosing shelter for 70% of the people who did give a reason (did not "guess"). For this particular question, the age and size of the dog (older and larger) were the reasons for 15% of those who gave a reason.

The next closest question to having a perfect score was question 19, which was the picture of the small dogs being displayed in an all-glass cage. Only 1 person picked the wrong answer, shelter, for this picture, but the reason they gave for this choice was "guess". This leads me to believe they were just picking random answers to get the survey over with quickly. The fact that the dogs were being displayed in a glass cage in the window was the main reason that people gave for choosing store.

The lowest scoring question in the survey was question 18, which was the picture of the 3 different dogs in the same caged pen. Only 4 people (15%) chose the right answer for this question, which was store. Most people cited "guess" as their reason for their choice, but this was the lowest scoring question of the survey.

The next lowest scoring question was question 14, which was the picture of the doggy play room with multiple, different dogs inside. 20 of the 26 respondents chose shelter for this picture, which was wrong. Many people did not realize that stores do indeed have these kinds of rooms for dogs. This picture is of a PetCo playroom, where dog owners can leave their dogs in a sort of "doggy daycare" while they go to work or do other things. Many of the stores we visited also have other services for dogs, such as grooming, veterinarian care and dog hotels. The only people who got this question correct had either seen something like this in a store before (2 people), or they guessed (4 people).

It was found that glass was a key giveaway to many people that the animal was located in a store. 100% of the people who gave "glass" or "window" as a reason for their choice attributed it to a store. A small cage was also a giveaway to people who gave store as a reason. Over 90% of the time people gave "small cage/enclosure" as a reason, they attributed it to a store. Thus it seems that stores are assumed to have small glass enclosures for their animals.

Cleanliness of the cage was also used as a reason for some peoples' choice. 85% of the people who gave the reason of "clean cage" chose shelter as their answer. This was an expected reason for people to choose shelter, which is why question 12 was asked. This was the question that presented the picture of the cage with feces covering the bottom. 92% of the survey takers got this right, choosing store as their answer. For people who chose store, they either guessed or said that the lack of cleanliness was their reason for choosing store. A large cage was another reason people chose shelter. Over 90% of the time people gave "large cage/enclosure" as a reason for their answer, they had chosen shelter. So it seems that people think that shelters maintain the cleanliness of their enclosures better than stores do and that shelters have bigger cages for their animals.

Age was yet another factor in the way people answered, but this was only a reason given for pictures with cats or dogs. Every single person who said that they decided based on the fact that the dog or cat was "old" or "large" chose shelter as their answer. People who said their reason for their choice was because the dog or cat was "young" or "small" (AKA puppy or kitten) always gave store as their answer. Thus, it seems that older, larger animals are not associated with stores, and that stores only seem to carry young dogs and cats.

Most of the questions presented a picture of a cat, dog or no animal. However, 4 of the questions displayed pictures of animals that were not dogs or cats. There was 1 picture of a rabbit, 2 pictures of birds and 1 picture of mice. These questions all scored over 70% right and 3 of the 4 scored over 85% correct. All of these animals were from stores, and so it seems that people associate shelters with mostly dogs and cats. While this was this case in this particular survey, it is important to realize that shelters take in more than just cats and dogs. Other animals are also cared for at shelters; stores do not have a complete monopoly over the distribution of these types of animals.

The last question I wanted to address in my analysis was question 7. This question was the picture of the puppy that was in a crate, and the crate had the PetCo symbol on the front. This picture was deliberately displayed this way to trick people into choosing the wrong answer. More than half of the survey takers chose store for this question, which was wrong. Around 75% of people said the reasoning for choosing "store" was the PetCo symbol, which many assumed was a dead giveaway. However, this puppy and cage are actually located at a shelter.

Something that people may not realize is that although some shelters may not support pet stores and may disagree with their approaches to animal treatment, these shelters may still purchase supplies such as food, toys and cages from these stores. Major pet stores such as PetCo and PetSmart may be able to offer better prices on these materials than local pet shops. Shelters may also want to save money by purchasing from these bigger stores. Although they may not be happy with supporting these stores, they may still rely on them for cheaper goods to supply the shelter.

One last thing that I noticed with this survey is that as the survey takers got toward the end of the survey, they stopped giving actual reasons as much as they had for the previous questions. The second half of the questions had nearly 60% more guesses as reasons than the first half of the questions did. On average, around 50% of all reasons given across all questions and all respondents were attributed to guessing (or no reason at all, which was counted as a guess).

The reason for this, I realize, is that the survey was lengthy, like this analysis, and I apologize to those who were annoyed with the length of the survey. But I will end my analysis here.

Thank you to all of those who took our survey, it was very helpful. Thank you to all those who continually gave reasons for your answers as well, even if the reason was just "guess". Another thanks to all those who read over this analysis; it was long I know but I appreciate your attention. Be sure to keep a look out for the next element of our project that is coming up! It should be out sometime on Tuesday or Wednesday.

I will be posting the actual answers to all the questions shortly after this, so be sure to look at those too.

If you have any questions or comments about the analysis, you can email them to me at smckenney11@gmail.com.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

For the second element of our project, we created a picture survey. The survey simply presents a picture of an animal and asks you to decide if the picture was taken of something in a pet store or animal shelter. Think you can tell which animals come from what place? Try it out! All the pictures in the survey are photos taken by Hillary Coates, Jenny Frank or myself (Seamus McKenney). Here's the link to the survey.